The Heart of Mid-Lothian is the seventh of Sir Walter Scott's Waverley Novels. It was originally published in four volumes on 25 July 1818, under the title of Tales of My Landlord, 2nd series, and the author was given as "Jedediah Cleishbotham, Schoolmaster and Parish-clerk of Gandercleugh". The main action, which takes place between September 1736 and May 1737, is set in motion by the Porteous Riots in Edinburgh and involves an epic journey from Edinburgh to London by a working-class girl to obtain a royal commutation of the death penalty incurred by her sister for the alleged murder of her new-born baby. Despite some negative contemporary reviews, some now consider it Scott's best novel.
Composition and sources
Scott signed the contract for a second series of Tales of my Landlord with Archibald Constable on 25 November 1817. He had the conception of The Heart of Mid-Lothian in his head by that date, and indeed it is possible that he had already produced the introductory chapter as early as April that year, but the main writing was done between January and July 1818. The original intention had been that The Heart of Mid-Lothian would occupy three of the four volumes and another tale the fourth, but at some stage during composition Scott decided that Mid-Lothian should be a four-volume work.
For the Porteous Riot in the first part of the novel Scott was able to draw on the extensive records of criminal trials arising from it, and these were published simultaneously with the novel as Criminal Trials, Illustrative of the Tale Entitled "The Heart of Mid-Lothian," Published from the Original Record. The central business of Jeanie and Effie Deans was suggested by a true story sent (anonymously) by Mrs Helen Goldie of Dumfries. Both the riot and the story of the sisters were radically reworked by Scott for his fictional purposes. For David Deans's rhetoric Scott drew extensively on the Covenanting lives by Patrick Walker (c. 1666–1745), and for English dialect he owed much to two compilations by Francis Grose: A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, of which he owned the third edition (1796) and A Provincial Glossary (1787).
Editions
The first edition, in four volumes, was published by Archibald Constable in Edinburgh on 25 July 1818 and became available in London on the 28th. As with all the Waverley novels before 1827 publication was anonymous. The print run was 10,000 and the price £1 12s (£1.60). It is possible that Scott had some input into the text of this novel in the 1823 Novels and Tales, but the evidence is not strong. In the second half of 1829, though, he revised the text, concentrating on the first half of the work, for the 'Magnum' edition and provided notes and an introduction: it appeared as part of Volume 11, all of Volume 12, and part of Volume 13 in April, May, and June 1830.
The standard modern edition, by David Hewitt and Alison Lumsden, was published as Volume 6 of the Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels in 2004: this is based on the first edition with emendations principally from Scott's manuscript; the new Magnum material is included in Volume 25a.
Plot summary
The title of the book refers to the Old Tolbooth prison in Edinburgh, Scotland, at the time in the heart of the Scottish county of Midlothian. The historical backdrop was the event known as the Porteous riots. In 1736, a riot broke out in Edinburgh over the execution of two smugglers. The Captain of the City Guards, Captain John Porteous, ordered the soldiers to fire into the crowd, killing several people. Porteous was later killed by a lynch mob who stormed the Old Tolbooth.
The second, and main element of the novel was based on a story Scott claimed to have received in an unsigned letter. It was about a certain Helen Walker who had travelled all the way to London by foot, to receive a royal pardon for her sister, who was unjustly charged with infanticide. Scott put Jeanie Deans in the place of Walker, a young woman from a family of highly devout Presbyterians. Jeanie goes to London, partly by foot, hoping to achieve an audience with the Queen through the influence of the Duke of Argyll.